Maybe you’ve tried all the goal setting, the achiever, “if it’s to be it’s up to me” syndrome. You’ve had the house, the car, the money in the bank, the social circle, the good job……and yet there’s still something missing?
You see, goals without a higher purpose lack passion or deep meaning. At some point you’ll ask yourself “Who I am? Why am I here? What should I be doing with my life?” Perhaps you have an inkling…..a hunch…that something more spiritual is the place to go next.
Maybe you, like me, have a “calling” – that something calls to you for some inexplicable reason. There’s a great quote that once said “Religion is what people do to avoid going to hell. Spirituality is what people do once they’ve been there!”
For me it was always about making changes. If you’re not happy with the results you’re
creating, then change what you’re doing.
Whining and complaining won’t make it any better, and nobody’s going to
come and rescue you. The sooner you
realise it’s you, the better. It’s what you do that counts. So initially I did private therapy, and then
started doing workshops to try and share this mindset with as many people as
possible.
Then in the late '90's I came across the blossoming field of Life Coaching, and saw a
natural extension to what I was already doing.
NLP helped me to help my clients clear up the mental clutter and
limitations that hold us all back. Life
Coaching looks at the external factors that make you who you are – your health
and eating habits, your family relationships, your intimate relationships, your
management of money, your environment, and your career. Now I had ways of dramatically improving my
own life, and the lives of others, on both the inside and the outside.
However, in
a completely unregulated industry, people could simply read a book and call
themselves a Life Coach. Oh dear.
Then you start to hit your late thirties, and true to the model you’re
about to learn, the idea of spirituality starts calling to you. Now it takes different forms for different
people, and for me it was in a concealed
body of knowledge and wisdom that had been banned until 1989, until laws
were passed that allowed the Hawaiians to teach their original ways again. Something about Huna attracted me, and for the first time in my life I could relate
to what people often term “a calling”.
Huna balances you out, and gets you down out of your head and into your
body again, grounding you. Instead of
being “the NLP guy”, I started to teach other concepts and principles that I’d
picked up that seemed to make sense, and more importantly, consistently worked
with everyone I shared them with.
That was always my core drive, and still is. To help people. Now I’m not a complete altruist, because it’s
my business and I expect to be paid. But
that was my passion – Maybe you’ve seen “Star Wars”, when Obi Wan Kenobi told
the Imperial Storm troopers “These aren’t the droids you’re looking for” and
they let them pass, instantly changing their minds. “Wouldn’t it be really cool to be able to do
that!” I thought. Imagine someone comes
to you with a problem like “I’m depressed”, and with a wave of your hand you
tell them “No you’re not” and they wouldn’t be.
That would be magic! Real magic.
And if you study every philosophy, every theology on the planet, certain
key concepts keep coming up.
Rituals. Physical exercise. Energy.
Numbers. The Five elements. Taking responsibility. Being at one with yourself. Life being a mirror of you. There has to be something to that if they
keep showing up, throughout history, throughout the planet. Mark Twain once said “The ancients steal all
our best ideas”.
My friend and teacher Tad James had once suggested to Richard Bandler,
the co-creator of NLP:
“What if all NLP is, is tying up the conscious mind
with a technique, while you give suggestions to the unconscious mind?”
In Huna, the Kahuna would often create a
ritual or task for the patient to undertake, and in so doing they gave their
unconscious mind permission to make the change.
It’s almost like the conscious mind needs to be convinced by doing
something tangible, while the unconscious mind does what it already knows it
can do, but needs the conscious mind’s permission. Think of the placebo effect in medicine. Or being dunked in water to feel cleansed, or
anointed. The ritual works better if you
use real water…
Milton Erickson, the world’s leading Hypnotherapist, often gave clients
tasks or ordeals to do, and by doing then, they “fixed” themselves. Hmmmm…..
I knew I was on to something. It
was also painful to watch people study, and teach, NLP as a bunch of techniques
that claimed to be able to cure everything from nail biting to HIV, but then
get disappointed when it didn’t work. Or
worse, blame the NLP practitioner when it didn’t. There’s more to it than that. You can’t expect someone to come along and
“fix you”. You have to be the source of your own change. Because then you get all the pride and
achievement of having taken charge of you mind and your behaviours too!
It was a shame to watch people spend four days with (in my opinion) the
world’s greatest presenter and teacher, Tony Robbins, get all psyched up to
change the world, and then crash down to earth a week later. Not only were they disappointed, they’d had a
taste of how good they could feel and they couldn’t recreate it
themselves. They’d have to spend even
more money becoming seminar junkies, just to recapture the high. As one client of mine once said,
“How much
more money do you have to spend before the penny drops?”
To make matters worse, the world of NLP was renowned for its competing
developers who spent more time arguing about who the genuine leaders of the
field were, than in advancing and improving the technology for the betterment
of its enthusiasts. Too much emphasis
was placed on legal actions, copyrighting, jargon, cyber squatting and whose
signature was on your certificate, which is ironic when one of the basic
beliefs promoted by NLP is to “respect everyone’s model of the world.” It was a world of politics, cliques and
possessiveness where the self-styled governing bodies had practically no
regulatory authority, and no way of enforcing their code of conduct. Basically anyone could buy their way up the
ladder and call themselves a Trainer, regardless of ability, flair, depth of knowledge
or integrity.
Intriguingly, all of the most successful leaders in the field of NLP got
into esoteric studies and spirituality.
Richard Bandler lived in Hawaii
And yet, having done
thousands of hours on one to one therapy, working with hundreds of clients on
the phone, by email, in person or in groups, over 25 years of personal
experience in dealing with human beings and their fears, hang ups, hopes and
desires, I’ve realised that the main and final reason these hard working,
well-meaning individuals suffer set backs, self doubt and turmoil, is because
they did not know what I know about how to tap into their “inner life manager”
and finally realise that the answer is never “out there” – it’s not going to be
handed to you in the next book, on the next tape or the next seminar. It’s inside you right now, you either
- Don’t
know that it resides inside you behind a locked door
- Don’t
have a key!
I was wrong to worry.
The results of these
sessions (usually an hour at a time) are already evident and there’s pages and
pages of testimonies on my websites and in my client files – they are happier,
healthier, in better jobs, in more passionate relationships, making more
money. Personal success is suddenly
realistic instead of a hyped up cosmetic “hope”.
But not for
everybody. I wouldn’t be telling the
truth if I said every client I’ve ever worked with dramatically turned
around. That’s not the case. Some put the phone down on me. Some weren’t prepared to do the work. Some wouldn’t spend a few hundred pounds to
make their ill-health symptoms disappear.
Some walked out of my office and never came back. Some made appointments but never showed. That’s life.
People are people.
BUT, the ones who
kept their appointments, invested some money in themselves and were willing to
put the effort in, every one of them blossomed, flew and transformed in a
matter of hours, weeks, months at most.
NLP had to evolve. Hypnosis alone wasn’t enough. Life Coaching is more than just hiring a
personal trainer. Huna was too ancient
and esoteric and turned some people off.
There needed to be a comprehensive and ecological model which was simple
and straightforward to use in your daily life.
After all, it’s what you do consistently, and persistently that shapes
your life. You can’t have a bath once
and be clean forever. To that effect, I
want to share what I’ve found with you, and I’ve called it HGE™
